The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: June is Gay Pride month. How many LGBTQ classical composers and performers do you know about? Which ones are your favorites or most surprise you?
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ALERT: This Sunday, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society’s Virtual Chamber Music Festival begins online. It is called “Bach’s Lunch” and will send out short concerts every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday through Sunday, June 28, when a grand finale is planned. It is FREE. But you have to sign up by emailing crownover@bachdancinganddynamite.org
By Jacob Stockinger
This past week the Rainbow flags (below) have started flying, including at the Wisconsin state Capitol.
Last year was the 50th anniversary of the riot or uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York City that eventually gave birth to a worldwide movement to insure that queer people deserve and will receive human rights.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pride, which started with parades and marches to celebrate that initial victory and the start of a global gay liberation movement that continues and widens today.
On this first weekend in June 2020, it seems fitting to recall the many LGBTQ composers and performers in classical music.
The gay rights movement has opened the closet doors not only of individual lives today but also of historical figures. When The Ear was taking piano lessons and started going to concerts and listening to recordings, and learning about classical music, the subject remained shrouded in silence and secrecy.
You could read and hear about Tchaikovsky (below top) and Leonard Bernstein (below bottom, in a photo by Jack Mitchell) – to take a very popular composer and a renowned composer-conductor — but no one mentioned the role of homosexuality in their lives and careers.
So here are several lists that may teach you something new about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer musicians – both composers and performers.
Some of the calls seem very iffy to The Ear. For example, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom) lived at a time when a homoerotic friendship did not necessarily mean a queer sexual identity. But one way or the other, historical proof and documentation can be hard to come by. And clearly there is much more to find out about the past.
Take a look. No longer is such information a rarity. From both the quantity and quality of the entries, at least you will see how scholars are taking new looks and undermining the heterosexual assumption that has wrapped so many historical and even contemporary figures in a wrong or mistaken identity.
Freedom, acceptance and respect are not zero-sum games in which one party can win only if another party loses. There is enough of each to go around.
So enjoy the information, whether it is new or not, and the respect it should inspire for the central role of LGBTQ people in the arts both past and present.
Here is a pretty comprehensive alphabetical list from Wikipedia of LGBT composers, both living and dead. It includes Chester Biscardi (below), who did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You don’t have to click on each name. Just hover the cursor arrow over the name and you will see a photo and biographical blurb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:LGBT_composers
And here is a list, also in alphabetical order and also from Wikipedia, of LGBT musicians and performers, not all of them classical. It works by clicking on sub-categories that include nationality – though one wonders if musicians from extremely homophobic countries and cultures are included:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:LGBT_musicians
Here is a similar list from QueerBio.com that also includes links to similar lists for rock, country, hip-hop, jazz, Christian music and more:
https://queerbio.com/wiki/index.php/LGBTQ_Classical_Music_Composers
Here is a more selective list from The Advocate, an LGBT magazine, of 18 queer composers who made history and you should know about:
And here is a similarly selective list from radio station WFMT in Chicago of 15 LGBT composers — including Corelli, Handel (below) and Lully — you should know about:
https://www.wfmt.com/2015/06/25/15-queer-composers-know/
From Arts Boston, here are 10 contemporary composers who are queer:
http://artsboston.org/2018/06/21/10-contemporary-lgbtq-composers-you-should-know/
Finally, here is a list from the Spotify streaming service that features many samplings of actual pieces by historical and contemporary queer composers:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX75gMjYMWCsk
Which names most surprised you?
If you have questions, comments or additional names and information to add — The Ear doesn’t see the acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk listed — please leave word in the Comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Happy Pride, everyone!
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Classical music: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) gives an impressive display of how it continues to grow and develop.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker, who also took performance photos. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
On Saturday night, in Mills Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Mikko Rankin Utevsky led his Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) in the first of this year’s two summer concerts. More than ever, it showed Utevsky in new degrees of bravery and enterprise.
The program was organized around the idea of the Baroque concerto grosso, in various later transformations.
To begin, there was one of the “Morning, Noon, and Night” trilogy of Haydn’s symphonies, No. 6 in D, Le Matin. Haydn used the first of his symphonies composed for his new Esterhazy employer to show off the solo skills of his players.
The young MAYCO counterparts did themselves proud in both ensemble and solo playing, with particular flair displayed by first violinist Valerie Clare Sanders (below) in her virtuosic solos. And Utevsky’s care in have his string players totally avoid vibrato gave a good demonstration of 18th-century instrumental sound.
The second work, by recent UW-Madison School of Music graduate in composition, Jonathan Posthuma (below), more explicitly recreated the old configuration in his Concerto Grosso No. 1 in E minor.
It presents indeed the proper concertino of two violins and cello, against a ripieno string orchestra. In place of the traditional continuo, however, Posthuma brought in four percussionists and a pianist. The percussionists are members of the local ensemble Clocks in Motion (below), currently making a name for itself as an avant-garde group.
The idea was fascinating, but in two of the three movements the results were confusing. In the first, the string orchestra was overwhelmed by floods of color worthy of a Busby Berkeley Hollywood spectacular, while the second movement was a long procession of pops and moans. All color and hardly any real musical ideas.
The third movement, on the other hand, was a lusty fugue, given forth at first by only the strings, with the percussionists then integrated into a quite well-balanced texture. This is stated as the first in what will be a full set of 12 concertos, to make up a typical Baroque dozen.
It will be interesting to see how such a project unfolds. But one must credit Utevsky (below) for giving this first venture its world premiere performance.
Another premiere followed the intermission. Utevsky was able to secure from the contemporary British composer Cecilia McDowall (below) the rights to the first American performance of her piece for chamber orchestra, Rain, Steam, and Speed, inspired by J.M.W. Turner’s powerful painting of the same title, with its subtitle of The Great Western Railway.
Less literally conceived than Arthur Honegger’s famous railroad evocation, Pacific 231, this piece is an effort to suggest the kaleidoscopic contents of the painting, in what might be called a British neo-Impressionist style. A challenging work for the orchestra, which they brought off very effectively.
Finally came not a concerto grosso, but a Romantic solo concerto, the one for Cello and Orchestra by Robert Schumann. Not as often heard as it should be, it is a handsome and enjoyable work.
The soloist was Parry Karp (below), of the UW-Madison School of Music faculty, of the Pro Arte Quartet, and of so much else. He approached the piece not in bravura pretentiousness but with a kind of affectionate warmth that suited it admirably, while also allowing Utevsky the chance to give his players experience in collegial ensemble interaction with a soloist.
What these gifted young players of high school and college ages are able to do is really amazing. Utevsky grows better and better in giving them — and himself — marvellous training opportunity. Watch for the second concert, with music by Ernest Bloch, George Frideric Handel and Haydn (the famed “Surprise” Symphony) with piano soloist Jason Kutz, at 7:30 pm. on Friday, August 21, location to be announced.
You can find more information here: http://www.mayco.org
Tags: "Surprise" Symphony, Arthur Honneger, Arts, avant-garde, Baroque, Beethoven piano sonatas, Bloch, British Impressionism, Busby Berkeley, Cecilia McDowall, Cello, Chamber music, chamber orchestra, Classical music, Clocks in Motion, concertmaster, Concerto Grosso, conductor, continuo, contrapuntal, counterpoint, fugue, Handel, Haydn, Hollywood, Impressionism, Isthmus, J.M.W. Turner, Jacob Stockinger, Jonathan Posthuma, La Matin, Madison, Medieval history, Music, Music education, Orchestra, painting, Parry Karp, percussion, Piano, Pro Arte Quartet, Robert Schumann, Romaniticism, Romantic, soloist, String Orchestra, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Wisconsin, WORT-FM 89.9, Youth Orchestra, YouTube
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